Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Al writes "The economy has hit green energy technologies hard, but technologies focused on energy efficiency and clean coal are still attracting money. Over the next few years, venture capitalists say that the biggest winners in clean tech will most likely be companies with technologies that improve efficiency. Such ventures often take advantage of cheap sensors, communications hardware, and software packages to monitor and control energy use both in buildings and on the electricity grid. High-capital businesses are now more likely to succeed if they can attract foreign funding. For instance, Great Point Energy, based in Cambridge, which has developed a process for converting coal into natural gas, has attracted $100m in funding from China."

"And working with finite resources like coal is a dead end. You will end up with the dirty parts regardless."

Well, it isn't like these resources are going to 'go away' in any of our lifetimes....so, at this point in time, for reasonably short term (20+) years success and profit, it IS a good business move to work with these.

The smart things to do for a company would be to maximize their profits on finite resources we still have plenty of today....and spend some of that profit on the next generation energ

Coal may be finite, but there's probably enough to last for longer than any of us really expect to be around.

OTOH, "Clean Coal" is not something that's ever been demonstrated. There's no proof that pumping CO2 underground will cause it to remain there for any long period of time. Etc. (It's true that a lot of the places that they are planning on pumping it to once held various gases [including CO2] for very long periods of time, but that was before we drilled holes into it. When you take a lot of stuff

You definition of "do the best" seems strange to me. Of course companies need to maximise the profit. Why should they minimise debt is beyond me (if you are talking about maximising net profit and not turn-over, debt is not an issue). You don't even have to say "maximise profit and minimise costs" becase costs are already factored into profit. So you are saying that companies that are doing best are those, that maximise profit. That calls for a Nobel prize in economics. Furthermore you are saying that the c

Probably would've been better to say "minimize debt obligations," as in the amount due to the creditors in each payment period. Lately, we've seen more than a few otherwise healthy companies brought down by debt obligations due to interest rates suddenly going up or things along those lines.

No, the point is - if you maximise your profit, that already includes any debt obligations. So if I say "maximise (net) profit" it also includes optimise cost including cost of debt. Minimising debt may not be the optimum strategy. It is easy to minimise debt - just don't have any. But that may not lead to maximum profit. You may also want to talk about risk but then again - if you talk about middle or long term profit optimisation that includes risk optimisation - again, not minimalisation. World of busine

Of course there are different types of companies and associations. What is the difference of a public benefit, a party, and different sorts of companies or a website. An association of people can do whatever they want.

You and your neighbors can e.g. own a cooperative that supplies electricity to your block. And a milk farm won't manufacture tanks and rifles because they are more profitable, just an allocation of free capital to these entities is guarded by greed because that is the essence of capital invest

Of course companies need to maximise the profit. Why should they minimise debt is beyond me (if you are talking about maximising net profit and not turn-over, debt is not an issue).

Because investors don't just care about profit, they also care about risk. Average profit with above average risk is not good.

Debt and profit interact like this (ignoring tax, for now):

Case 1: A company uses 100m of capital, all from shareholders, to make an average of 10m/year of profit. Return to shareholders: 10%, plus annual variation. The company goes bust if it persistently makes less than 0 profit.

Case 2: An equivalent company uses 100m of capital, 50m from shareholders, 50m from 5% debt, to make an average of 10m/year of profit before interest, 7.5m/year after interest. Return to shareholders: 15%. The company goes bust if it persistently makes less than 2.5m/year from its operations, so the risk to shareholders is larger. If profits are a normal distribution - or anything like it - this could be quite a big difference in risk.

So what matters is not profit, but risk-adjusted profit....and leverage increases risk. In theory, shareholders should care because they adjust the leverage themselves (owning 1000 of the share capital in case one, or 500 of the share capital and 500 of the debt in case two, is equivalent). However, the tax system encourages debt by taxing profit AFTER interest. This is a BAD thing, and may have contributed to our current mess, because it decreases shareholder returns in case 1 more than in case 2, encouraging otherwise pointless risky behaviour.

... the companies that will do the best will be the ones that can maximize their profit with a minimum amount of debt.

. . . that would normally be a very economically sound business plan. However, governments are now in the process of bailing out businesses that have minimized profit, with maximum debt, and are "too big to fail."

So who gets to pay for that?

"Ah, Mr. Bond, I was expecting you. I see that you have again made a tidy profit. I will forgo any unfeasible sharks-with-lasers-aimed-at-your-crotch death machines. Instead, I will simply tax you to death."

There have been a number of ads by IBM lately pushing the idea that their new line of computers is needed to redesign the nation's electrical grid, claiming that half the power never makes it to any light bulb.

In other areas power companies will actually buy you the new CCFL bulbs if you pay the tax on the bulb.

The push for efficiency is long over-due.

But realistically, will the replacement of a an entire power grid really save more than it costs? Is it really necessary?

Wouldn't more energy be saved by taxing long haul trucking out of existence and putting the money into a resurgence of rail freight?

Well, when your grid ( and im assuming the US one ) is running right to its limits, something needs to be done. You have no real room for failure, look at the last chain reaction of outages there were. Increasing capacity of the grid will increase efficiency (to a point of course). But you gain from less losses, and increased reliability...how much did the last major grid outage cost you, as a country?

The electrical grid is a critical piece of infrastructure for any economy. If you dont invest in it correct

Great- so with CFLs instead of putting carbon in th air we put mercury in the earth. Yeah, that's at best a sidegrade, at worst actively worse. If they really wanted efficiency they'd push for LEDs- bright, cheap, low polution to make, highly efficient, and they never burn out.

Actually, CFLs have a higher energy cost of production than incandescents, due to their more complex shape and increased quantity and variety of materials. If you turn an incandescent off when you're not using it, you probably have a good shot at having a similar lifetime energy consumption (given how fragile both incandescents and CFLs are; the former to vibration, as is common in California where I live, while the latter succumbs to voltage spikes or especially from brownouts in record time.

The T8 fluorescent tubes used in commercial buildings contain far more mercury than a CFL, and I'd say we've learned to handle them safely. The additional mercury from CFLs is minuscule, even if we assume a slightly higher percentage are disposed of improperly.

Great- so with CFLs instead of putting carbon in th air we put mercury in the earth

Yes, CFLs contain mercury howewver coal fired power plants emit more mercury. Switching from incandescent lights to CFLs reduces the mercury released more than the bulbs contain. According to the Energystar [pdf] [energystar.gov] "Coal- fired power generation accounts for roughly 40 percent of the mercury emissions in the U.S." "As shown in the table below, a 13-watt, 8,000-rated-hour-life CFL (60-watt equivalent; a common light bulb type)

Power plants are only slightly more efficient than your average car, and a little less when you add in transmission (excluding combined heat-power plants). There are a lot of things that need to be done.

A lot of this technology is about implementing control logic for system optimization, which used to be too expensive. Differential and integral control algorithms are hard to impliment in pneumatics. Multi-variable real-time optimization requires much more processing and feedback than what your typical DDC

The bacteria have to produce a lot of CO2 in the process of converting coal to methane, because the C:H ratio for coal is 1:1 at best, whereas for methane it is 1:4. The extra hydrogen has to come from somewhere, or the extra carbon has to be discarded. In the case of bacteria they most probably do the equivalent of coal gasification, converting coal and water to CO2 and extra hydrogen to produce methane. This doesn't change the fact that a lot of CO2 must be produced in this process, which negates any envi

The question is does this conversion to METHANE increase the efficiency overall? I mean does going from Coal to Methane double or quadruple the power burning it produces? Is CO2 created from methane conversion more easily contained/controlled/captured than say burning coal? A popular idea for capturing CO2 is to convert it into Sodium Bicarbonate which has been featured as an idea on Daily Planet on the Discovery Channel a few times. Maybe burning the coal wholesale wo

Clean coal doesn't exist. Saying it is a clean energy form is like saying fusion is a clean energy form: regardless of whatever merits you can come up with for the system, carbon capture and sequestration (clean coal), like fusion, has no working plants (and probably won't for at least a decade) and is more a gimmick for public support and research funding than anything else. Money would be better spent on the efficiency efforts mentioned and commercially viable forms of clean energy that can be bought in the market today.

I may not have made it clear there, but that's not quite the logic. The logic is that we have an environmental crisis and limited time and resources to put into fixing it. We have technologies that can help us get off of it now for far cheaper than CCS, while CCS is going to be a good decade before anything is viable. The argument is that we should spend as much of our limited capital on the proven technologies while letting the technologies that aren't as likely to help immediately get less funding. If you

The logic is that we have an environmental crisis and limited time and resources to put into fixing it. We have technologies that can help us get off of it now for far cheaper than CCS, while CCS is going to be a good decade before anything is viable.
Actually, as I read it, this idea IS a good one. It allows coal to be converted to something that we can feed the pipelines with right away. It lowers the costs. More importantly, we are likely to build many more power plants shortly. The question is, do you

Clean coal doesn't exist. Saying it is a clean energy form is like saying fusion is a clean energy form: regardless of whatever merits you can come up with for the system, carbon capture and sequestration (clean coal), like fusion, has no working plants (and probably won't for at least a decade) and is more a gimmick for public support and research funding than anything else. Money would be better spent on the efficiency efforts mentioned and commercially viable forms of clean energy that can be bought in the market today.

So all of the other posts here explaining technologies that convert coal to another, cleaner form of energy are all wrong, and you are right? Even if it's something as simple as taking the scrubber technology we've had since the birth of the space program and attaching that to smoke stack to remove the CO2... it doesn't exist, right? (how do all those space guys breath?)

They don't, they breathe. In any case, making those scrubbers is a high-energy-cost activity and would be a net loss. Instead, you use the CO2 output to produce Algae, a process already tested by the USDOE at Sandia National Labs [nrel.gov], where they were able to capture over 80% of the CO2 output in the algae. Then you can in turn make the algae into biodiesel and fertilizer, fixing some of the carbon and getting a second use out of the rest. In other words, your idea is stupid, and slashdot is a stupider place for

They don't, they breathe. In any case, making those scrubbers is a high-energy-cost activity and would be a net loss. Instead, you use the CO2 output to produce Algae, a process already tested by the USDOE at Sandia National Labs [nrel.gov], where they were able to capture over 80% of the CO2 output in the algae. Then you can in turn make the algae into biodiesel and fertilizer, fixing some of the carbon and getting a second use out of the rest. In other words, your idea is stupid, and slashdot is a stupider place for having to hear it - but there is a similar, working solution.

My idea was an example, and yes, your idea... or should I say the idea you mentioned is much better. The point I was making is that even if you could make 100% clean, with no CO2, no mercury or anything else, these guys would still oppose it for no other reason than they've been brainwashed to think that it's evil.

My idea was an example, and yes, your idea... or should I say the idea you mentioned is much better. The point I was making is that even if you could make 100% clean, with no CO2, no mercury or anything else, these guys would still oppose it for no other reason than they've been brainwashed to think that it's evil.

It IS evil because CO2 is destroying the oceans! This is the really relevant part you don't seem to get. That CO2 is sequestered and has been for hundreds of millions of years. If we put it into the atmosphere all at once it causes overacidification of the oceans which will eventually kill basically all marine life except for perhaps brittle stars and whatever's hanging out at the ocean vents. It doesn't MATTER how efficient your process is, at SOME point that CO2 WILL be released into the atmosphere, and w

While I do agree that plants are the best way to recycle CO2, the rest of your post is complete crap. When there is more CO2, plants do better. More CO2=more plants=more CO2 converted to O2 and CARBOhydrates. It's a cycle that has been going on since nature invented photosynthesis.

The idea that CO2 will destroy all life on earth is absurd. Yes, coal, oil and other fossil fuels are carbon syncs, but where do you think that carbon came from? Here's a hint... where do you think fossil fuels came from? Yu

So, please, stop trying to insult the intelligence of people on slashdot until AFTER you have educated yourself about how the world works.

Never in the recorded history of the planet which goes through several ice ages (recorded in the ice that didn't melt - it never all goes... so far) have CO2 levels been remotely this high. The oceans are becoming more acidic over time, not less. The Earth uses (among other methods) subaquatic, exposed limestone to sink the CO2 out of the ocean. Problem is that it can't handle it as fast as we can put it into the atmosphere. If we continue along these lines, what do you think the end result is going to be?

Some plants grow better with higher CO2 levels, like poison ivy [blogspot.com]. However other plants grow slower. There are winners and losers [cababstractsplus.org] wherein some plants grow faster and others slower under high CO2 levels. The same is true under higher temperatures. [mongabay.com]

We certainly have technology to capture CO2, but not on the scale of a powerplant. We also do not know the proper technology for sequestering it safely for 1000s of years. And the energy required - my goodness. It requires an extra coal plant for every two coal power plants you want to sequester just to power the sequestration process.

I never said sequestration didn't exist. I said safe (I'm adding this part), cheap, carbon capture for power plants does not exist yet and is not worth our while compared to t

In space they can dump it overboard. Got a place to put all that CO2? Check out the raw tonnage you're dealing with before you answer.

Um... where is all that CO2 now? We are not creating it, we are releasing it. How bout we put it into plants, the way nature intended? Maybe we could put into your Mountain Dew. There's a thousand other uses for CO2.

Or, is your problem not with coal and CO2, but something else [ncpa.org]:

Scientists at Columbia University are developing a carbon dioxide (CO2) scrubber device that removes one ton of CO2 from the air every day, says the Heartland Institute.

While some see the scrubber as an efficient and economical way to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, many environmentalists oppose the technology because it allows people to use fossil fuels and emit carbon in the first place.

According to Columbia University physicist Klaus Lackner, who is leading the research team:

* Producing a large number of CO2 scrubbers can keep to a minimum any rise in atmospheric CO2 without the economically painful elimination of inexpensive energy sources.
* This technology would allow people to use fossil fuels, which they will be using anyway, without destroying the planet.

Environmental activist groups such as Greenpeace have consistently opposed similar technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestration, because they do not address what they see as the root of the problem, says the Heartland Institute.

"This is just one more piece of evidence that environmentalists aren't concerned about solving a problem," said Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis. "Every problem, as they see it, is one way to restrict people's lifestyles, and if you come up with a technological fix that can solve a problem but doesn't require sacrifice and lets us go about our business the way we were before, they're not happy about it, even if it solves the problem."

Where've I heard such simpleton logic before? You're either WITH US or AGAINST US, you dirty traitor. Pretty cut and dry!

Yeah, it is, actually.

Any energy or environmental economist would be laughing their ass off at your sophomoric view of what "wealth" is

Actually, a lot of energy economists would agree with me. The more energy people have, and the less expensively they have it, the more their lives improve. It's cheaper for them to travel, to get to work, to power electronic devices and get new features

Great Point Energy has been unsuccessfully trying to drum up investors since 2005. Andrew Perlman is not a scientist, but is better described as an adventure capitalist. In venture capital, you don't actually have to have a technically sound idea. You just need to convince investors that you have some magic formula for creating a profitable business and they give you money. They still do not have a working prototype that shows a positive return on energy. They are only drawing up a proposal for a $100m plant for China. China has not committed to any funding.

I work for a company that is retrofitting 30-40 year old steam turbines at coal power plants. Its such a difficult and expensive process to get a new power station built (of any fuel) that the power companies want to keep these coal plants running for another 40 years. You can blame the NIMBY folks, or the environmentalists that require environmental study after study before ground is broken.

I'm in the business, and the cost of electricity is going to continue to rise pretty spectacularly. Most of the plants built in the past 15 years or so are natural gas, which is now expensive and continuing to rise in cost. Many of plants built in the 60's running on cheap fuel are getting near their end of life. Some are being retrofitted but many aren't worth it. Nobody can build a nuke plant these days and coal is equally taboo. Few people are studying engineering so the manpower is also getting scarce. Its not a crisis yet but most of the power industry is aged in thier 50s and 60s.

We aren't in a crisis yet, but in another 10 years its going to start getting ugly.

Few people are studying engineering so the manpower is also getting scarce. Its not a crisis yet but most of the power industry is aged in thier 50s and 60s.

A lot of that is really due to management shifting to an emphasis on economics and a phobia about paying wages even when they are under one percent of operating costs. I was in the power industry at 24 and was one of the three technical staff under 50 years old in my division of around a hundred scientists, engineers and technicians. (That was 15 year

I dunno. Manpower issues seem to resolve themselves to a certain extent. As demand for a profession rises, the salaries of those in the profession also rise. This attracts more people to the profession, thereby meeting demand. Of course, there's usually a few years of lag time, a la the 1990s boom in IT salaries, but it resolves itself and everyone can go back to being broke again.

You can blame the NIMBY folks, or the environmentalists that require environmental study after study before ground is broken.

For which you can blame the power industry, since if they had just fucking kept things clean on their own, none of this shit would be necessary.

I will fight to the death any attempt to put a coal, oil or natural gas burning power plant anywhere. They are destroying the biosphere and putting more of them in is hastening our own demise. If the energy industry wants to be responsible and put in some cleaner power plants, then perhaps it will see more support. Don't act like these people don't have a valid agen

Oh please. I bet you're the sort of person who believes that we can replace all our coal plants with Wind and Hydro by 2015 if we spent enough money.

First you have to get the liscensing for all these power plants. For Hydro, this is mostly impossible since someone will stand up and say that the turbines chew up fish at a ridiculous rate and destroy the river. For wind, people will complain about the birds. These drawbacks were true in 1960 but they aren't anymore. You'll be tied down for at least 3 years trying to get the permits and approval to build. And that's being optomistic.

Then you need to build the things. But the lead time for many components is pretty long and still getting longer, even in this economy. We're buying forgings and bearings 3-4 years in advance. And then you have to machine it. These are big forgings and bearings, so not a lot of companies make them.

Finally, you need to install and run the plants. As I said, the manpower is getting a little short. Startup engineers make a minimum of 60k base salary a year and it goes up from there. That's not incuding overtime, which is excessive. So its not at all about the money. Most companies that are installing wind turbines are running flat out too along with everyone else.

Coal is mostly clean now, and it's a huge resource that the US has Right Now. I just spent a week in New Cumberland PA, right next door to Three Mile Island and several huge coal plants. And you know what? The air quality was excellent. There are tons of trees in that area and the scrubbers on all the plants are excellent. The ash is recycled into various useful products and the stuff that comes out of the scrubbers (mostly gypsum) is turned into Gypsum board.

As for natural Gas, its completely clean. I went to one plant in Wallingford Connecticut that was in a heavy residential area. The turbines were abour 400 feet away from a bunch of houses, but nobody who lived there knew they were even running because of the sound wall and the clear exhaust. It's even burning a renewable resource. Most people don't realize that Natural Gas is 99% Methane with a hint of Hydrogen. Sure its not coming from renewable sources *now* but there's no reason it couldn't.

I *want* one of these plants in my backyard. The taxes on 250 million dollars of equipment makes my taxes less. The highly paid employees have to eat, sleep, and socialize somewhere. The electrical costs are less because less energy is wasted in transmission.

If you want to turn this country into Vermont, maybe you should just move to Vermont.

As someone in the field, what about the issues surrounding retrofitting these older plants with new equipment?
IIRC, there are certain changes/repairs/upgrades that can be made, but if they go beyond a certain point of improvement, don't they have to then comply with the Clean Air Act of 1970?
What kind of efficiency improvements could be made to these old plants if they didn't have to comply, or maybe not fully?
It seems like you could decrease pollution overall if you could eke out a few % (eg, burn less

Because that's what Fisher Tropsch is, ancient. I don't deny the novelty of Great Point Energy's process, but why did it take 70 years between Fisher-Tropsch and this technology? Lack of lobbying^Wmotivation, I guess.

Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is currently uneconomical, and producing hydrocarbons through this process and then burning them in engines generates much more CO2 than burning oil, because some of the coal has to be used to generate the extra hydrogen present in gasoline:C + 2 H2O = CO2 + 2 H2

I thought the idea of "clean coal" was finding a way to store the CO2 to prevent it from screwing with the climate. This "coal-to-gas" does nothing towards this goal, so I don't see how one would call it "clean coal" other than the obvious lack of sulfur or mercury.

One way that this does help with reducing CO2 emissions is that the exhaust of the plant is primarily CO2. Standard coal plant exhaust is still mostly nitrogen, oxygen, CO2, SO2, etc.What does the plant do with it? Compresses it into liquid, and pipes it up to Sasketchewan. An oil company injects it into old oil fields to recover more oil.Basin Electric CO2 Sequestration [basinelectric.com]
This is where the CO2 savings come in.

If you enjoy being depressed, you may want to read "The Next Bubble [harpers.org]", an article in Harper's by Eric Janszen from February 2008. He predicted this green bubble over a year ago, and it's a pretty grim prediction:

Supporting this alternative-energy bubble will be a boom in infrastructure--transportation and communications systems, water, and power. (...) Of course, alternative energy and the improvement of our infrastructure are both necessary for our national well-being; and therein lies the danger: hyperinflations, in the long run, are always destructive.

Sound something like recent legislation? Then comes the bad news:

The next bubble must be large enough to recover the losses from the housing bubble collapse. How bad will it be? Some rough calculations: the gross market value of all enterprises needed to develop hydroelectric power, geothermal energy, nuclear energy, wind farms, solar power, and hydrogen-powered fuel-cell technology--and the infrastructure to support it--is somewhere between $2 trillion and $4 trillion; assuming the bubble can get started, the hyperinflated fictitious value could add another $12 trillion. In a hyperinflation, infrastructure upgrades will accelerate, with plenty of opportunity for big government contractors fleeing the declining market in Iraq. Thus, we can expect to see the creation of another $8 trillion in fictitious value, which gives us an estimate of $20 trillion in speculative wealth, money that inevitably will be employed to increase share prices rather than to deliver "energy security." When the bubble finally bursts, we will be left to mop up after yet another devastated industry. FIRE, meanwhile, will already be engineering its next opportunity. Given the current state of our economy, the only thing worse than a new bubble would be its absence.

Yes, you should read the whole article. It'll take some time, but you'll come away with a better understanding of how our global economy works these days.

Increasing our grid-based electrical output is not the solution. We could probably halve our residential use just by adding insulation to houses and replacing light switches in certain rooms with timers. On the other hand, if we started installing inexpensive grid-tied wind generator systems at houses around the country, there would be no major regulatory hurdles to cross. It doesn't work everywhere, but we should be doing it every place that it will. The idea that we should continue expanding eternally is

Converting coal to methane is very similar in principle. However, you need an abundant source of hydrogen. The cheapest source of hydrogen right now is natural gas, mainly composed of methane, so the circle is closed. The only feasi

The 'economy' didn't hit all these green energy projects, the plummeting price of oil did. Few, if any, of these projectcs are remotely competitive with oil/nat gas under $75 and in many cases still higher - and even with substantial subsidies and tax breaks.

As we saw with ethanol, energy 'policy' is just another boondoggle of lobbyists and special interest groups seeking government funds so they can make some bucks. Wind, solar, clean coal and so on all live off the government teat to one degree or another. Would they even exist without those tax breaks and direct funding?

Few, if any, of these projectcs are remotely competitive with oil/nat gas under $75 and in many cases still higher - and even with substantial subsidies and tax breaks.

And you know *why*? It's because oil/gas are, themselves, subsidized, you just don't seem to realize it. It's called negative externalities. I mean, could you imagine how expensive oil/gas would be if the companies were actually forced to run clean operations? But they don't. Instead, they destroy the environment around their operations

Just to chime in on the coal argument. Or to be more specific, fossil fuels.

The only reason mankind as a whole has experienced explosive population growth and massive rises in standards of living, is that we discovered and exploited fossil fuels. We have taken out a massive "loan" from the earth and whether it runs out or not is irrelevant. We are basing our future survival on energy that was previously stored over billions of years. Patently, there is no point expecting coal or oil to renew themselves naturally in a useful timescale, and our population is still expanding.

We must find sources of energy that do not rely on previously stored resources. Once those resources are gone, we are pretty much bankrupt, energy-wise. So get with the program, and finally accept that coal or oil in any guise, are only stop-gap solutions to keep us going until we can totally replace them. Spending time and effort on "clean" coal is wasting time and energy on something we will have to do without, more likely sooner than later. And I'm not even going to mention the specific environmental issues, or the myriad chemical/biological uses that fossil fuels could be put to instead of being burnt.

Of course, nuclear fuels are a naturally stored resource too, but they are more efficient, cleaner, and hold possibilities that mere fire can never approach. Solar is the only energy source that is truly long term viable, simply because it is not produced or stored on earth. It comes from outside the system. Is it ready now ? Of course not, but it is the only answer in the universe. (Unless we can somehow harness dark energy/matter).

I found the article about the magnetic spin battery concept interesting. Currently, all nuclear plants use nuclear material in place of fire, to produce heat and then steam to drive turbines. What if a nuclear reaction could be relied upon to directly induce a specific magnetic spin in a "wire" and thus supply the grid ? That has to be more efficient than converting heat > steam > kinetic energy > electricity. Imagine a small cylinder (0.5 " diameter) that you clamp to the power cable of a device and directly induces current to feed that device. Dreaming I know, but this is why that discovery has greater potential than many posters realise.

Have a look around at the current state of biodiesel in the USA, for example. Right now, despite a $1 a gallon subsidy, promising players such as Nova Biosource Fuels are shuttering their doors. The country has nearly 2 billion gallons of plant capacity for biodiesel, and a fraction of that is produced. The situation is the same for ethanol. And, just when things are gloomy for the USA, of course, along come our so-called European friends to jack up tariffs on American biodiesel and put the screws to ev

... in the commercial building sector is the triple-net lease. This is the most common lease for commercial space. The lease put all the costs, including energy, onto the tenant. The owner has no incentive to make energy efficiency improvements, and possibly a lot of disincentive. Even if the tenant is willing to pay for the improvements (as a trade off against their energy costs) the owner has incentives to disapprove them (such as avoidance of legal liability or any other kind of hassle).

Only owner-occupied buildings tend to get energy efficiency infrastructure technology. I've heard that is about 10% of the sector. The only way around this will be to adopt laws that cause pain to building owners that is best relieved by making or agreeing to energy efficiency improvements.

In many areas of the country clean coal won't work since the geology isn't right for storing the captured CO2. Additionally, there currently are not even any working demonstration plants, only talk of plants that could be converted. The sheer amount of CO2 produced from coal is also a huge problem. It would require massive pipelines to dispose of the CO2 from areas that don't have the geology for storing it, and then there's the danger of a fissure opening up somewhere and the CO2 escaping, which would be deadly.
As I see it, the only long term methods of reducing CO2 are renewable and nuclear.
The only reason clean coal is happening is because the government is throwing money at it and all those coal producing states and the votes they represent. There has not been a single demonstration that clean coal actually works.

If we had civilian nuclear plants that were good at producing electricity I would agree with you. Unfortunately in nearly every case we have a compromise dual use plant that produces very expensive electricity along with the weapon materials. Pebble bed is an exception and might just work well - but can you really see the USA buying such technology from China, South Africa or Germany once it is proven? It will be home grown Westinghouse 1960s white elephants painted green or nothing.

If we had civilian nuclear plants that were good at producing electricity I would agree with you. Unfortunately in nearly every case we have a compromise dual use plant that produces very expensive electricity along with the weapon materials.

The only "dual-use" nuclear power plant in the US was the Hanford 'N' reactor which was shut down shortly after the Chernobyl accident. Light water reactors are poor sources of materials for weapons due to the high 240Pu, and will be even poorer with the high burnup fuels.

Let's see... We can't have nukes, because nuclear waste is dangerous for thousands of years and is produced in tonnes by reactors.

But "clean coal" is ok, because CO2 can be stored by deep well injection. And unlike nuclear waste, it's dangerous forever, and produced in millions of tonnes by power plants.

I guess sequestered CO2 is better than nuclear waste because giant clouds of killer gas are more "natural" than that awful "atom" stuff. After all, look at the area around Chernobyl, and compare it to the scenes around Lake Nyos.

Oh, and while we're at it, lets consider the number of coal miners killed each year. Too bad we can't ask them about "clean coal" technology.

I think one of the reasons people are more afraid of nuclear waste than CO2 is that after you're irradiated, you know you'll die, but are still alive for some time and aware of the fact you will die. (Regardless of the actual chance of that happening, which is extremely low.) People really fear being confronted with their mortality. That's why they are afraid of cancer and flying, but not so much of road accidents where you die instantly.

You can take the 'waste' from the reactor and re-enrich it (a process that is also used for creation of nuclear weapons unfortunately) and turn it into fuel-grade material again although you do lose some mass in the process.

The idea of capturing CO2 is basically a result of chemical compounds/processes that turn CO2 into Sodium Bicarbonate or Baking Soda. If you put it underground in places with high Sodium content you'll end up with it converting to Baking Soda as it tries to escape.

Indeed, never mind the things like arsenic (that remain toxic forever) that are in coal ash.

The fact is, if coal plants had to meet the same standards for radioactive release that nuclear plants do, they'd all have to be shut down. There's all kinds of radioactive stuff in coal (radon, thorium, etc) -- not very much per ton, but coal plants burn millions of tons of the stuff. Indeed, if you could extract the thorium from coal you'd get more energy burning it in a reactor than you would from burning the carbon in a furnace. (Don't take my word, look it up.)

I don't know if words can fully describe the degree to which I am angered by the focus on CO2 to the exclusion of concern about the particulate and heavy metals that coal contains.

We have literally poisoned the ocean with mercury to the point that we need to issue warnings to people about eating too much fish. We load up our rhetorical cannons and open fire over the CO2 issue while we are LITERALLY poisoning ourselves every single day with particulate pollution and heavy metals from coal fired plants.

It is stupid and misguided and ignorant in amounts that make me think that only a deliberate effort could achieve.

The sheer amount of CO2 produced from coal is also a huge problem. It would require massive pipelines to dispose of the CO2 from areas that don't have the geology for storing it, and then there's the danger of a fissure opening up somewhere and the CO2 escaping, which would be deadly.

Natural gas reservoirs have contained the gas for millions of years, so it is fair to say that the technology exists to sequester CO2 on a geologic time scale. The reservoirs are far enough below the surface that any leaks would be a slow process.

There's also some talk about needing the CO2 to combat a future Ice Age due to changes in the earth's orbit and where the earth's axis is pointing at perihelion and apohelion.

I just got done reading the Great Point stuff and frankly am shocked that W and team did not push this (hopefully Obama will fund this). It would still leave us CO2, which really sux. BUT, the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere from a power plant would be less AND all the other pollutants(mercury, sulfur, nitroxs,etc) would be gone. Basically, this would allow a power plant to convert from Coal to Natural Gas. Now, take that a step further. In an ideal powerp

Frustratingly, I still do not understand clean coal. To me, its like a clean bomb, vs. a dirty bomb. Its still does damage, maybe not as much, but it is still harmful.

Clean coal is smoke and mirrors. There is no such thing as clean coal. Even if what comes out of the smoke stack is cleaned up coal mining is dirty. Mining itself isn't clean but some of what's mined can be recycled, such as silicon and metals.

Intelligently-executed wind power does not kill birds. I personally find the windmills quite attractive, so the latter is subjective. The most efficient wind turbines are vertical types built where they do not have to be erected into the air to be driven. You are attacking a straw man by tilting at windmills.

How about solar (must cut down trees or cover grass to install)?

There's not very many trees or much grass in the desert, where solar is most applicable.

All those things are much cleaner than coal. It is only for backroom politics we still depend on the stuff.

How about solar (must cut down trees or cover grass to install)?

Yep, lots of trees and grass in the desert. But jeeze! The iguana population is gonna explode with all the shade.

Is your problem with coal or just energy in general?

I don't understand the question.

OK, you got me. Solar power is good for deserts. Now, how about the other 75% of the US where they are ALSO putting up solar? How about all the trees that are cut down to run the wires from the deserts to the cities?

And if all those other energies are much cleaner than coal, why are you not down at your state capitol telling those hippies that are protesting the proposed nuclear plant to shut the hell up?!!? No, instead, you are here with them telling me how bad coal is and that you will oppose coal no

You cannot/will not make coal clean. That is unconditionally guaranteed. You just want to keep burning coal because it's cheap and convenient. Or you have some other interest. To hell with the consequences. That's for the next generation to deal with. If people are protesting nuclear, it's more likely because it's being handled as negligently as before by the same companies who are dumping sludge into the rivers and crude into the oceans. So if you want to keep your damn iPod charged up, find another way. S

We have energy demand, and energy production, two different things. We can still do a *lot* more to reduce demand and not just fixate on the production part (this is also the main article point). If you had ever been inside a superinsulated [wikipedia.org] home you would know what I am talking about (I have helped build and retrofit a few). It is quite conceivable and has been proven that-for instance- you can take a normal stick frame residential home and drop its energy demands for heating and cooling down to like 10-20%

Coal burns all the way through. You get so much CO2 in the air and so much ash for every bit you burn. There's no changing that. It's conservation of matter. You could catch the CO2, but then it just screws up the ground water table and doesn't really help, because nobody would do it and it just adds another storage problem (we see how well they store the ash).

Out of curiosity are you a cleverly constructed parody of a dumb ass or a real one. Real ones typically aren't that dumb.

Ignoring the only proven alternative to coal, as in one that is supplying a significant percent of electricity in several nations (over 50% in some cases), only because some dimwits don't understand physics or engineering, is extremely stupid.

Green energy technologies are generally expensive niche products. Ignoring nuclear power because of controversy, green electricity generally isn't generated on a comparable scale to old fossil fuel power. It likely could be. Pouring money and research into it would make it more feasible.

Unfortunately if everyone were to become 'energy independent' or rather 'less dependent' (since I doubt we'd decrease our overall energy consumption enough to be able to go 'off grid') on the existing energy infrastructure then the government would be losing a good portion of its power over the people. If people aren't as dependent on that wire coming into their house as they used to be then the government and power utilities don't and won't have as much muscle with the population anymore.

Clean coal isn't green energy. "Clean" coal attracts money because rationalising it as clean coal helps maintain the entrenched coal generated electricity industry at the expense of the promotion and development of potential competitors. Entrenched industries lobby more effectively than emerging competition.